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Cheating, We've all done it at least once in our lives, in all types of situations. Its human nature to want to win, and some of us will go against the rules to do so. It can be harmless, but in many cases it is annoying, or even hurtful.
So, why was cheating and certain zone hacks become such a large problem in the Age games? Anonymity plays a big part in this. Behind the buffer zone of a computer screen and several hundred miles of telephone wire, people don't have to worry about upsetting someone else by playing unfairly, cheating, or exploiting bugs.
Its also easy: it's far easier to download a hack, and get an advantage in a game than to actually practice and become good. For example, way back when I was playing a lot of AoE over the Zone. I faced up against a player with a name such as CrackDevilz or something similar. Two minutes after the game started he had sent an attack with an obscene amounts of units, all the while taunting and even boasting about his ability to cheat.
Another factor that adds to this problem is the lack of maturity or even common courtesy in many of the players in the Age community. They simply don't care about wasting other people's time, upsetting others, or unbalancing a ladder or league system that someone has put a lot of time into creating. When these people do cheat, they often do not refrain from crude insults or taunts. This isn't a problem for experienced players; most people I know would just simply laugh at the idiocy of their opponent, but for new players, it can be pretty disheartening. In many ways these cheaters can have a very bad effect on the Age games. Some new players can actually be scared off or even turned away from a game simply from a single bad experience. They may assume all players they will meet are immature and rude, and just not put any time into trying to play the game again.
This line of thought leads into another problem found in the zone. The rating system! To be honest, I don’t like it; players become too obsessed with there ratings. Have you ever lost a game and went “DAMN IT!” not necessarily because you lost, but because when you look at your nick again it will be down 8 points. It was designed with a nice idea in mind, everyone could play people there own rating, and we wouldn’t have all these problems with new players joining expert games, and vice-versa. But some players are just so obsessed with there rating its not even funny. (Tonight, I even observed 2 of the top10 rated players trading points with each other)
Another problem with the rating system: Although not strictly cheating, it is quite common to see average or even seasoned players basically hustling new players. The more experienced player will enter a newbie game, or attract the attention of low rated players, pretend they also are new to the game, and practically con the new player into playing a rated game. Once in game, they will proceed to annihilate their weaker opponent, and take the points. Although measures can be taken against this (like you have to play someone of equal/near rating to you to gain sufficent points) it is still a problem, even when ladder status isn't involved. Some people simply find it fun to take advantage of and humiliate others.
You might ask why don't the zone simply ban cheaters or implement measures against exploitation? Well, I looked into this, (as usual This makes the issue of stopping cheaters a tough one for ES, but there are things that can be done. For one, the availability of multiple accounts to individual players could be limited. I mean, after someone was caught cheating and their zone nick was posted on every age site in the known universe, how hard was it for them to simply just sign up again? However, This also has a negative effect on those who share a computer between multiple people, but some kind of limit should be put in place. Another thing that could be improved would be for ES to take a tougher stance when dealing with proven or suspected cheaters, and make more of an effort to ensure these players remain banned or cannot cheat. This of course requires more resources being put it, and if multiple, high profile bans take place; the popularity of the service can also be affected. This is an especially valid point when cheating occurs in ladder or ranking systems. All too often in these situations, I've seen cheaters let off lightly when caught, when they deserved either a suspension or permanent banning from the service. Whatever kind of prevention ES is going to put into place, it needs to take note that when one player ruins the fun for another, or even several others, action should be taken. Although by no means do I believe this should be taken as far as it is with online RPGs such as EverQuest, (where you have to accept a licensing agreement basically saying "I will not Cheat" every time you login.) But, I do think that firmer action needs to be taken against cheaters. That's what it all comes down to. Cheating in the Age games is easy (AoK made it impossible to use a trainer, but it still has "other" methods). There are few consequences for doing so, and installing a cheat program or something similar is a simple task. For this reason, those who don't have the will power or morality to play fair won't, as the alternative is so easy a task. I hope cheating in AoM will be impossible, or tangible penalties are put into place for doing so, its human nature to take the easy way out, and as long the dishonest path remains easy, it will be a well-trodden one. ~~~~~~ It seems to me that there is some paranoia about people using trainers against you. As far as I am concerned, trainers are impossible to use in multiplayer. Out of all my games over a full 2 years of AoK I am yet to see a trainer be successfully used in multiplayer. All I know of trainers is to be used in single player. What a trainer does is take a variable like food, wood, gold and stone, changes them, usually by increments very high such as 1000. Thus giving you an unfair advantage. AoK has checks to prevent the use of trainers. If we were having a 1v1 over the zone, that is a peer-to-peer connection (correct me if I am wrong). Our two computers are constantly pinging each other with information like units on the map, changing variables (such as a depleted gold pile, and most importantly player resources). So lets say I alt-tab my playing screen, open up that "awesome" trainer of mine with the name of like "ReDeYe" or something on it. Then I was like "oh I’ll just give myself 10,000 stone and circle his base with castles." So I click the 1000 stone button 10 times and I get my stone. Then, next time my computer talks with yours, yours says, "Uh oh, we have separate counts for your stone, something has gone terrible wrong." Next it flips out, screams like a little child, and the games goes out of sync (Oos). Having said that though, if you are in a rated game and are losing badly and don’t want to lose those points from your game, why not purposely Oos using a trainer and get no points taken off? This way you don’t lose the game, and don’t lose points. I think this should be labelled as a form of cheat, and the players who use it be punished severely. The only problem is, trainers are not the cause of every game that goes Oos, so it’s impossible to distinguish between the two. I've had plenty of games where just when the tide turns my way and I am about to take down someone’s last castle, or 20 of my elephants are ripping his town apart, that’s when the game "mysteriously" goes Oos. This is the problem and as of now, And ES should try and do something about it in AoM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, what the heck is this “bug” thing people are always on about? No, its not some form on insect Game companies seem to have the idea that "only a few people know, so it's not a problem". Wrong, instead, the fact that only a few people know, and are thereby gaining a competitive advantage over people who don't, is precisely the problem. Even the guys at ES seems to be doing it: Quote: In multiplayer, you can take advantage of command lag to save a few seconds on the opening. Because Mayans start with 4+1 pop, you're immediately housed, and must loom first. However, if you press HCCC (select TC, queue 3 villagers), then immediately hit loom, your loom research will start first, but the villagers will be queued automatically after the loom, without the multiplayer command lag. This saves a few seconds on your age times, so it's worth doing. This seems kind of lame Bugs are stumbled upon. It is not available to everyone, only the lucky people who find it in the quest of a good strategy. It is not fair. Also, I think the way bugs and balancing issues are handled once discovered is worth discussing: ES deserves the lion's share of the blame in this. They knew about most of these bugs and exploits, and they knew for a long time, but made almost no effort to fix them. It seems to me that if they were interested in the integrity of their game, they could only one thing. Remember how long it to patch problems like this? Perhaps a simple patching system could become a feature of the in-built multiplayer system. i.e. I load up, and I’m hit with a simple “New update available, please wait, downloading, updating reallyimportantfile.cfg, done, that bug where all your army is killed instantly for no reason is fixed, v-server side code is now optimised” and then a restart and your ready to go However, I do understand that this could be very hard to program (Stone_Giant would like to apologise to the ES programmers currently throwing things at the screen and screaming “IS THAT GUY KIDDING ME”) ----------------------------------------------------------- **If any of the information here is incorrect (which it probably all is lol) then please tell me and I will change it/modify it. Any more information on this topic?? Post it and I can add that also (with due credit of course Thanks for taking the time to read this!
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Stone_Giant